Laurence Clark

Laurence Clark is an internationally-acclaimed comedian, presenter, writer and actor who has cerebral palsy. His observational, political stand-up and hidden camera footage demonstrate the endearing naivety and ridiculousness of human behaviour by seeing the world through his eyes with humour and warmth. He’s performed everywhere from the House of Commons to a double-decker bus in Sheffield. His 6 critically-acclaimed solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe have gained him 21 4-star and 3 5-star reviews. With television appearances on BBC, ITV and Channel 4, Laurence was the subject of the BBC1 documentary 'We Won't Drop the Baby' shown recently.

This blog is about an issue which isn’t considered particularly sexy. Whenever it does make the news, it’s usually reported as something that only affects our grannies. By the end of the decade it will be eating up a large part of your hard-earned council tax when spending will exceed 45% of your council’s budget. Successive governments over the past 20 years have pledged to tackle it and then subsequently chickened out.

I am one of the 70% of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) recipients with a lifetime award that Iain Duncan Smith set his sights on this week. He intends to introduce more rigorous, regular assessments for the replacement PIP benefit and abolish lifetime entitlements such as mine.

Over the past six weeks I’ve had mixed feelings towards the proposals to close 36 Remploy factories, leading to compulsory redundancies for 1,518 disabled workers. On the one hand, I’ve always been against sheltered workplaces which feel to me like a relic from a bygone age. But on the other hand, the government’s timing of this move, coinciding with high unemployment, cuts to support funding and the erosion of employment rights feels very unfair and misjudged.

Disability rights campaigners have been quick to point out that the majority of media coverage around the Right to Die debate has been pro-assisted death. Certainly I’ve yet to see a television documentary to adequately give a voice to people on both sides of the debate. Therefore, both as a disabled person and a stand-up comedian, I was really disappointed by Doug Stanhope this week for heaping abuse onto journalist Allison Pearson and campaigner Nicki Clark for daring to disagree with the pro-assisted death stance.